Senate Democrats’ delaying tactics against many of President Trump’s Cabinet nominations aren’t just causing Republicans headaches, they’re also working to save some of President Obama’s last-minute “midnight” regulations.
Obama issued a stunning 145 regulations between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Republicans are working to repeal a bunch of them using a streamlined process provided in a little-used 20-year-old law called the Congressional Review Act, or CRA.
The CRA law gives Congress the power to rescind any unwelcome late regulation from an outgoing president through a simple majority vote in both chambers of Congress. But it also comes with time constraints. Even under the law’s expedited House and Senate procedures, it only allows resolutions to come up at most for the first 60 legislative days after the regulation was published in the Federal Register.
The law also only allows for consideration of one regulation at a time, and the House and Senate rules require hours of equal debate time for opponents and proponents of the regulations. In the Senate, floor time is at a premium, especially with Cabinet nominations the main priority in the early few weeks of the year.
Frustrated Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to delay and obstruct Trump’s nominees to an unprecedented degree, without any real impact because GOP senators have the votes to confirm the nominees themselves.
Democrats have justified the delays as necessary to allow a full vetting of Trump’s key nominees, many of whom are wealthy businessmen and women with complicated and extensive financial holdings.
But they are also celebrating an added benefit of potentially salvaging some of Obama’s midnight regulations.
Already this week, Republicans have worked to repeal two of the most far-reaching of the regulations.
The Senate on Thursday deployed the CRA to repeal the Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule, which imposed new water emissions testing for coal and other factories. Democrats say the rule aims to ensure clean drinking water standards, but Republicans counter that it could destroy tens of thousands of mining jobs and put up to 64 percent o the coal reserves off limits.
Republicans also overturned a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring companies to annually report payments made to a foreign government or the U.S. federal government relating to the commercial development of oil, natural gas and minerals. The GOP argues that it puts U.S. companies at a disadvantage to foreign competitors by forcing them to publicly reveal a “playbook” of their deals.
The House has teed up several more CRA-backed repeals for Senate consideration as soon as possible, including a new methane regulation on the oil-and-gas industry that industry critics say could cost up to $1 billion by 2025. Another, which the House passed Thursday, attempted to respond to the 2012 Newtown, Conn. massacre by barring anyone with a mental disability receiving Social Security Administration benefits and requiring third-party assistance with their finances from buying guns. Republicans argue that rule discriminates against disabled people without due process.
Many of the GOP’s repeal efforts could fall by the wayside if Democrats are successful in throwing sand in the Senate gears enough to drag out Trump’s Cabinet confirmation process until well into March, eating up valuable Senate legislative time in the process.
“There’s a 60-day clock that’s running and the longer that that clock can run on a CRA than that gives from, our point of view, a better chance [to survive] for these regulations that are worthy, and we think that’s a good thing,” Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, told reporters Thursday.
“The more of them that reach 60 days, the more of them that go into effect,” Carper added.
“Floor time is precious and if they continue to do things without the comity that is a tradition in the Senate, it means they’ll get less things up on the floor,” Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., told the Washington Examiner.
Cementing the Obama-era regulations is important for Democrats because any rule a CRA repeal successfully overturns, agencies can’t revisit again for several years.
For this reason, Democrats argue the law hurts them more than Republicans because their party tends to support the imposition of more government regulations aimed at helping the environment and protecting workers, while Republicans generally want to reduce the regulatory burden on companies and individuals.
They also chide former Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s decision to co-author the measure back in 1996.
“Thank you, Harry, for that gift,” Carper remarked.
